Race and Socioeconomic Inequality/Raça e desigualdade socioeconômica

According to science, “race” does not exist. In other words, there is no way to analyze a person’s genes and determine their racial classification. It is also possible for a white person from Columbia to be more genetically similar to a black Columbian than with another white person from Canada. It is also true that if “race” doesn’t exist, “mixed race” also does not exist. As I have argued previously, “race” is about privileges and penalties. In countries like Brazil and America, people who have a European phenotype have more advantages than people with non-European phenotypes. If privileges and penalties are the basis of “race”, socioeconomic statistics are perhaps the best proof of this. In Brazil and America, the socioeconomic position of Afro-Brazilians and African-Americans are consistently worse than that of white Americans and white Brazilians. For instance, 33.2% of black Brazilians live below the line poverty, in comparison to 14.5% of white Brazilians. In the US, 24.5% of black Americans live below the line of poverty in comparison to 8.2% of white Brazilians. The differences are almost 19% and more than 16% respectively. The same inequalities can be noted in regards to income.

In America, here are the statistics of weekly income for black, white, men and women:

White Men: $788White Women: $626Black Men: $600Black Women: $533

In Brazil, income is measured monthly and here are the corresponding statistics:

These inequalities can also be noted in terms of access to college education. The inequalities in education between blacks and whites have roots in the era of slavery in both countries and the disparities are still evident.

Percentage of Americans over the age of 25:

who have completed a college education: 24.4%with a college education that are white: 84%with a college education that are black: 4.5%

Percentage of Brazilians over the age of 25:

who have completed a college education: 6.8%with a college education that are white: 82.8%with a college education that are black: 14.3%

In both countries, more than 4 of every 5 persons who have a college education are white. In America the percentage is 84% and in Brazil it is almost 83%. Although these statistics show a wide disparity between blacks and whites in both countries, the difference is perhaps more apparent in Brazil because the Afro-Brazilian population in the year 2000 represented almost 45% of the Brazilian population while African-Americans represented only 12.3% of the American population. These statistics are the basis for my previous argument that a system of affirmative action must consider the effects of race rather than simply class when the discussion is access to a college education.